President Obama's surging popularity: What it means

The president enters his second term with his highest favorability rating in three years

President Obama
(Image credit: John Gurzinski/Getty Images)

Fresh off his second inauguration, President Obama is starting his new term with his favorability rating at a three-year high. Sixty percent of Americans say they have a favorable opinion of Obama, according to a Washington Post/ABC News poll released Wednesday. That's a considerable improvement over his poll numbers during last year's heated campaign, when Obama typically scored in the low- to mid-50 percent range. Of course, Obama is still way short of the peak of his personal popularity, when 79 percent gave him high marks at the start of his first term four years ago.

Still, today's numbers are even better than they look for Obama at first glance, according to Brett LoGiurato at Business Insider. The percentage of people offering "strongly" favorable ratings (39 percent) is up, too, and exceeds the percentage saying they're strongly unfavorable for the first time in two years.

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE
https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/flexiimages/jacafc5zvs1692883516.jpg

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up
Harold Maass, The Week US

Harold Maass is a contributing editor at The Week. He has been writing for The Week since the 2001 debut of the U.S. print edition and served as editor of TheWeek.com when it launched in 2008. Harold started his career as a newspaper reporter in South Florida and Haiti. He has previously worked for a variety of news outlets, including The Miami Herald, ABC News and Fox News, and for several years wrote a daily roundup of financial news for The Week and Yahoo Finance.